


i love you better than ten - thousand lives —

by vercinjetorix



Category: ABCU (Aethlyn Brain Cinematic Universe), Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Favour of the Scribes, Original Work
Genre: F/M, UPDATE: this is officially canon divergent, but [singing] I DONT CAAAAAARE, major L for anyone in the surrounding vicinity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:40:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26330527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vercinjetorix/pseuds/vercinjetorix
Summary: Vercinjétorix has never had to face her own monstrosity like this before. Cedwyn understands.
Relationships: Original D&D Character(s)/Original D&D Character(s), Vercinjetorix/Cedwyn
Kudos: 4





	i love you better than ten - thousand lives —

She’s not spoken all morning. Some time just before dawn, she had slipped from between his arms, forgetting, momentarily, that he no longer sleeps. He had let her go without question, watched her wrap herself in his cloak over her dress, open the door only enough to allow herself through it, then shut it with almost no sound at all.

Cedwyn rolls onto his back, sighing as he sinks into the hard mattress, his hand lingering on the sheets where her body had been. There is no warmth to remember her by; he half-wonders if he had dreamed her. Perhaps he had never left his cell at all. Soon he might wake up there again, still coughing, still drowned.  _ Still human. _

This thought consumes him for the better part of an hour. When she returns she smells of flowers, her hair half-wet, and he realizes that she must have snuck to the bathhouse before the others could get the same idea.  _ I could have accompanied you, _ he wants to say; but if she had wanted him to come, she would have asked. There is a reason, somewhere, beneath the neutrality in her face.

“You're unhappy,” he says instead, causing her to freeze in the act of hanging her freshly soaked gown. The way it falls heavy over the open window exaggerates its rips and tears, throws a rose hue over the room as sunrise seeps through the fabric.

“I'm not.” 

“You are.”

She still does not turn to face him. “Not with you.”

“With what, then?” He rises to sit, brows drawn in concern. “Look at me. Please.”

She is so hesitant, he almost feels guilty for asking. Still, she turns, her face lifting from beneath the hood of his cloak to meet the soft light streaking through the windows. In it, he can see the dark circles under her eyes, the cracking skin of her chapped lips, the alarming paleness of her countenance. She looks more herself than she had when he’d laid her down to sleep — but only just. 

“I had not seen my reflection since the ball,” she says, softly, “up to now.”

_ There is the reason _ . His unbeating heart is heavy in his chest as he frowns. “I … don't understand. I only see the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Vercinjétorix stands at the foot of the bed, unmoving, some statue of a goddess long forgotten save for in his dreams. Her unbrushed hair falls madly about her in waves to her waist, swaying when she inhales, her shoulders rising and falling gracefully with the action.

He watches, enchanted by her, his head tipped curiously to one side.  _ Has he ever seen her so nervous before? _

“In Arishkanae, they say the light of day changes what we see," she says, half a whisper, before his riding cloak falls from her shoulders with a dull  _ thud _ . In the lowlight her fresh scars are cast in gold; some are more brutal than others, carved deeply into her ribcage, her arms, over her collarbones and across her shoulders to her back. Her black bruises are now somehow warm in their darkness, the hollows of her cheekbones made sharper. More ghastly.  _ Dead. _

_ Silence _ . Her eyes do not leave his face when she breaks it, even softer now: "Does it change for you?" 

His stare drifts over her pale, naked form. An awed moment passes, another.

“Come here,” he says, incapable of anything else just then.

Vercinjétorix doesn't need to be asked twice. Her bare feet pad across the floor as she drifts towards him, ghostlike, then crawls across the foot of the bed and into his lap. He brushes her hair back from her face as she straddles him, cradling her in his rough palms, his thumbs stroking her cheeks. They stay there for a long time — she, voicelessly asking if he still loves her, and he, asking how he could not.

“The light of day,” he murmurs, leaning in to nudge her nose with his, “only makes it easier to admire you, Vercinjétorix.”

Finally, he wraps his arms tightly around her. He pulls her in for a warm, deep kiss, drinking in the long sigh it draws from her.

They are impossibly close. She tangles her fingers in his hair and pulls him closer, somehow, her head tipping back to expose the long scar across her throat. Cedwyn’s mouth finds it in time, his tongue pressed to what should be her pulse point, and she shifts forward in his lap, rocking her hips down in the process.

The language that passes between them is wordless. Inexplicable to any outsider. But he understands her body perfectly, knows exactly the question she's asking. His palms press flat to her skin as they trail down her spine, easing slowly down until he's gripping the curve of her ass. She sighs again, breath more ragged this time, and he can't resist any longer; he leans up to capture her lips once more, groaning softly in turn when she tugs ever so slightly on his hair.

“Do you know?” He asks when they part, trailing his mouth along the line of her jaw.

“Do I know what?”

“What you do to me?” 

He feels her grin in lieu of seeing it, but it warms him all the same.

“I don't. What do I do to you, my love?”

He parts his lips and sucks a mark into the tender spot just between her ear and her neck, revels in the way she unravels already. Her arms twine around his neck as she rocks her hips down into him again, this time guided by his hands on her. She deserves nothing but this — to be held, loved, smiling — forever. Now, at least, he can ensure that will be so. 

Gently, he rolls them both, laying her on her back. Her hair splays about the sheets, framing her in a wild golden halo. He hovers over her like that for a long moment, committing her expression to memory. This is how he wants to remember her, should they ever be parted again: her pink petal lips kiss-swollen, lifted in a smile that reaches her eyes, slowly restoring from the unmistakable grey of death. 

Her thighs part and he settles between them, one arm sweeping beneath her back to arch her towards him, the other pressed reverently against her cheek as he leans down to kiss her again.

“I missed you so much,” she whispers into his mouth. “I dreamt of you … every night, I dreamt of  _ y _ -”

She's silenced at the press of his calloused fingertips to her clit. He finds her already wet, her thighs trembling at the touch, and hums low in his throat at the sound she makes when he rubs slow circles against her.

“What did you dream about?” It’s half-smothered by another kiss. He relearns the curve of her lower lip with his tongue, pressing his hips firmly against her and swallowing her subsequent moan.

“ _ This _ ,” she keens, grinding down against his hand. “You … inside of me —  _ oh _ —” 

He pushes a finger into her and curls, pressing against the spot he knows makes her squirm, then sets a slow, steady rhythm. It seems a tragedy to allow such a beautiful mouth to go unkissed for so long, but to watch her like this — as she unfurls in his arms, for him,  _ because _ of him — is too much to resist. 

He adds another finger. She inhales sharply, her chest stilling as she reaches out to grip the starchy sheets , then exhales a shaky moan. Her lashes flutter open, gaze meeting his with an ardor so deep he thinks he might drown in it,  _ has _ drowned, would drown again.

His hips jut up into her again, pressing his fingers deeper; her fists twist in the blankets, tugging them off the edge of the mattress. “ _ Cedwyn _ ,” she gasps, both of them now only half-aware of the still open window. June will hear them next door, if she wakes — if she hasn't been awoken already. It doesn't matter. There is only their bodies, his weight against her, the fulfillment of every wish she has ever had. “Please,  _ please _ — “

There's no question as to what she's asking. He pulls back in an instant, his eyes sweeping over her body as he does, before he's removing his breeches with suddenly fumbling hands. She's hardly had time to laugh at him before he's pressed against her entrance, before he's sinking into her; she’s tight around the thickness of him, shuddering as she whines his name. He can't help but groan low in response, dipping his head to stifle it against her mouth.

If an eternity passed like this - buried deep inside of her, still as she sweeps her tongue over his - Cedwyn would be content. It's not until she rolls her hips up that he wills himself to pull back, still slow and gentle, rocking into her as she sighs sweetly into a kiss.

Vercinjétorix reaches for him when his fingers find her clit again, wraps her arms around him and digs her fingers into his shoulder blades. He moves to kiss delicately over her throat, mindful of the bruises still painting it, of his sharp incisors brushing dangerously close to them. He pulls out of her, thrusts his hips into her again, again, again,  _ again _ , each time with more purpose, the room filled with the sound of his skin against hers. 

Neither of them are going to last much longer; that much is clear by the way she throws her head back to muffle her moan in the pillows, the way he can feel her hands tremble as they trail up his spine to grip at the base of his hair. She locks her legs around him, the pressure of her ankles urging him harder, deeper, and soon she’s clenching around him, her eyes rolling back into her lashes before they press shut entirely. 

Vercinjétorix’s chest stills as she unravels, her body tensing beneath him, her mouth falling open soundlessly. Because he knows her, knows exactly the melody her ecstasy makes, he kisses her then, swallowing the cry she finally chokes out on a desperate breath as her back arches. 

In the aftershock she melts, half-limp in his arms, moving only to take his hand away from her and twine their fingers together against the sheets. She gasps into his mouth with every continual snap of his hips, her dull fingernails finding just enough purchase in his back to imprint crescents in his skin, and his resulting exhale is shaky at best. Were the circumstances different he might pull out now, sweep his arms beneath her thighs and have her with his tongue until the day is through — or until she’s spent, whichever comes first — before his own pleasure is ever a priority. But this is no ordinary circumstance. Vercinjétorix is here, in his arms again, so  _ suddenly _ , and when her eyes flutter open to meet his gaze she is smiling up at him — a smile that undoes all distance, all time, all wrong. Here, on top of her, realities are made and unmade.

_ “Come for me.” _ The whisper is a tender kiss to the edge of his lips, then to his cheek, then his jaw. How could he possibly deny her anything? Especially now, when he knows life apart from her so horrifically intimately? 

So he does as she asks. His pace quickens as he pulls her up against him with one arm, gripping tighter at her hand with the other, and as she cries out against his mouth again his body replies  _ yes, yes, this is what home means now. If fate exists  _ — and he has started to believe in it more and more, these terrible days — _ she is his _ . 

With a shudder he is undone, pushing her back over the edge with him, his groan drowned by her whimper as she clings desperately to him, her thighs trembling around the bliss of him inside of her. He does not know how long they stay there, panting superfluously against each other, her voice a breathless litany of “ _ oh ... oh … oh.” _

Their parting is inevitable. When he is ready to face that he slips away, lays her body to rest against the blankets again and brushes his lips over hers as he passes by. She rolls lazily to her side to face him as he goes, her hands finding his cheeks as she leans in for a kiss that melts into another, another, another, another.

Time is nothing now — for either of them. There is no more ever-ticking clock, counting down to his final death, to the eternity they will spend apart. If he desired to hold her in his arms for a thousand years, kissing the evil from her — if  _ she _ desired so — he could. He doesn’t think it would be enough. 

“You aren’t disappointed?” She asks on a breath, some time between one kiss and another.

Cedwyn can find no words to convey exactly how right she is.  _ Wrong she is? _ He shakes his head, both at her words and his lost train of thought, pulling her in for another long kiss. His hand roams up the raised line of a scar now gracing her side, an act of quiet worship. How she is so resilient, so brave still, he does not understand. Only knows that she is wonderful for it.

“I am so in love with you,” he whispers, then slips his tongue into her mouth when she sighs, gently pulling her on top of him.

No words pass between them again until her gown is dry, billowing in the wind of the hazy afternoon. 


End file.
